Week 4: 06.05-06.11 Vancouver

——— Exploring Chinese Immigration in old “Gold Mountain”

This week we continued to explore the history of Chinese immigration to Canada from different aspects. We went to the Musqueam cultural education centre to learn more about a history of the First Nations Musqueam people on Monday.

Besides, we also learned more about heritage buildings from the lecture by Bill Yuen. Bill shows that a place or one thing involves all five main aspects, intergeneration sharing and interaction, food culture, community and mutual assistance, affordability, and economic revitalization, then it can be seen as “heritage”. Therefore, I believe Chinatown in all around the world can be seen as “heritage” because it is an essential area for Chinese immigrants. Chinatown has its own unique food culture, which is quite different from western food culture. For instance, dim sum restaurants, originally from Kwangtung province of China, which has already spread all over the Chinatown in different cities. I believe the dim sum can be seen as an important marker of nostalgia. Some of overseas Chinese from Kwangtung province may have the habit of yam cha, so they may miss the food of their hometown when they stay far away from their hometown. As such, to explore and discover the food culture of Chinatown may be helpful for learning the heritage of Chinese migration.

It was a wonderful experience that our group had spent the time to Chinatown for dim sum on Sunday. Besides to eat dim sum, we had also chat with the manager of the restaurant and some customers, and we had interviewed them as well. During the conversation with a couple originally from Hong Kong and immigrated to Vancouver before 1997, they showed us lots of interesting stories and shared lots of feelings to us. I was so surprised that the woman told us that she would not have any feeling of nostalgia for the food from her hometown. Because she indicated that the dim sum such as SiuMai in Vancouver is also delicious as in Hong Kong. And the chef of whom making dim sum were also migrated to Vancouver as well. Therefore, she would not feel a huge different between Hong Kong and Vancouver. I think the words she said is quite interesting because we seldom to think of this phenomenon, we normally presume that overseas Chinese may have the feeling of nostalgia on food since they stayed far away from their hometown.

Photo: Yam Cha in Floata Seafood Restaurant

Additionally, after visiting the Chung Collection at UBC library, I consider that the primary source is quite important for discovering and studying the historical heritage of Chinese migration. All of the objects on display in the exhibit can be seen as the primary source in the study of history. As a result, thousands of artifacts in the Wallace B. Chung and Madeline H. Chung Collection contributes to the study of chronicling early British Columbia history, immigration, and settlement, as well as the Canadian Pacific railway company.

Photo: A Post of Canadian Pacific in Chung Collection